


Empty Vessels

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22175788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: Two compassionate officers pay a visit to their lonely starship during a much needed refit.  Comforting Enterprise may not be the first thing on Commander Tucker’s mind…
Relationships: Malcolm Reed/Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	Empty Vessels

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after the recorded events of the mission's fourth year, this is a piece of utterly pointless smut. As ever, only the mistakes are my own!

It started off so easy.

Nobody turned a hair at the sight of two officers walking the halls after twenty-three hundred hours: but why should they when Jupiter Station was rammed tighter than a porcupine’s ass with Starfleet pips? Even the senior staff of Earth’s greatest vessel were, briefly, anonymous.

Down in the working underbelly, long after the late shift packed up? Not so much.

His companion, Commander Trip Tucker noted fondly, had slipped into stealth mode the minute they reached the giant deadlock on the maintenance section’s outer bulkhead: and that was, all told, a good thing. Locked into his Senior Tactical Officer status, Lieutenant Reed didn’t have time to whine.

Not that Trip blamed his lover. Skittering through deserted repair bays toward their abandoned starship, his brilliant idea suddenly seemed a whole lot less inspired. “I didn’t expect it to be this quiet,” he stage-whispered, wincing against his own echo.

Thin, well-cut lips pursed as Reed glanced back over his shoulder - presumably having already assessed the likelihood of their being ambushed by Suliban in the next fifty metres. “Well obviously the arse-end of spacedock’s going to be crowded with revellers at this time of night,” he drawled. “What were you expecting, Command to be staging a sodding rave?”

“I thought you’d hear the auxiliary systems in the background, is all.” Affronted, Tucker loomed out of the gloom, blotting the light from Reed’s torch. The air danced to a disdainful English huff.

“I’d have turned up the air-con in my quarters if I’d known all you were after was a bit of erotic background noise!”

Trip’s volcanic snort rolled down the narrow channel beneath Enterprise and in spite of himself, Malcolm grinned. “Now, stand back. This one’s tricky.”

While the Southerner hopped from foot to foot Reed set about the delicate process of outwitting Starfleet’s most sophisticated defences, aware of a pleasurable tingle starting up at the base of his spine. This wasn’t how he had intended spending the evening – especially not thirty minutes ago, when he’d been flat on his back with Trip’s tongue down his throat – but there was something sinful about this latest misadventure that, loath as he was to admit it, was really turning Malcolm on.

The deadlock released in his hands. “Told you,” he said complacently. “There’s not a lock in Starfleet that can’t be broken, when you know how.”

“Smartass.” The word caressed the sensitive skin at his nape, followed a second later by the full, pliable lips that released it. “Clear?”

“Clear.” Through the door and up the next ladder brought them right to the ship’s belly, and Reed felt the tension in his tighten a notch. “You know, my bed would’ve been more comfortable.”

“Later, lover.” If he didn’t have the same fantasy – a version of it, anyway – no way in hell would Mal be playing along with a break-in. _Challenge to his skillset, my ass. He’s wanted sex on the bridge as long as I have. Longer, most likely!_

Alright, he hadn’t mentioned his exact intention: just kissed his man senseless before suggesting they pay their poor lonely lady a clandestine visit. But Malcolm was bright. He’d figure it out.

Trip’s confidence was vindicated the minute they clambered aboard, the Brit’s dark head popping back through the hatch as he leaned to offer a helping hand. “You’ll hot-wire the turbolift?” he asked, wincing against the echoing clang of the door behind them. “I’m buggered if I’m walking all the way to my post!”

“No problem.” Giddy with relief – no sirens; no comm. unit crackling into life; no concealed sniper leaping out to defend the pride of Starfleet – Trip swooped to plant a noisy kiss on that smug pouty mouth, oblivious to the clatter of flashlight hitting deck when Malcolm’s hands found something more important to grab a hold of.

Minutes ticked by while they swayed together, savouring every millimetre of contact through a couple too few layers of Starfleet cloth. Swathed in darkness, cocooned by silence, the urgency that had driven Tucker through their corridor dash dissipated. Now there was only Malcolm and the languid, sensual feeling being close to him released through the engineer’s body.

“Bridge?” Reed murmured eventually. Trip grunted his agreement. “Torch is knackered, I think.”

“We’ll pick it up on the way back.”

“If we can find it.” Feline in his certainty the lieutenant plunged into the gloom, crooking a finger then chuckling at the absurdity of the gesture. “Come on. They’ll run the next sweep soon, and I need to be in position to block our biosigns.”

“Malcolm, did you swallow the station handbook?”

“No Trip. I simply paid attention in class.” 

“What’s that word you use? _Swot_!” 

The shorter man’s laughter worked better than any fairy-tale trail of breadcrumbs. Between its echo and the warm, woodsy scent of cologne hanging in the air, Tucker didn’t need to see where he was going.

“Right.” Opening up the turbolift was a moment’s work for Malcolm and he slipped inside, already removing the oblong panel over the internal controls. “If you get us moving, I’ll bypass ship’s sensors. And no: I’m not going to tell you where I learned that.”

He didn’t need to. Section 31. _‘bout time he got some pleasure out of that stuff!_

It wasn’t easy, working so close in the dark. Hips bumped and fingers got tangled in the narrow slot but neither man objected, and when Tucker staggered against the lift’s juddering halt there was a steady hand already placed to cup his ass. “Safe?” he questioned.

“Well, I doubt the captain’s staging an orgy...”

Snitty. Even when repressed glee thrummed through every word, Malcolm just had to snark. Trip pushed his butt back into that no-longer-quite-necessary palm and gave a wiggle.

“Damn, maybe Ah should’ve booked,” he drawled, standing back against all protocol to allow a junior officer out first. Giving his boyfriend’s buttock a fond pinch, Malcolm made a dart for the tactical station.

“I’ll sort out that sweep while you’re deleting the other bookings, shall I?” he suggested, too intent on the task at hand to waste time on his companion’s activities. With a languid sigh Trip ambled to flop in the central chair – the only one not ripped out to aid the refit - the squeak of softened leather giving his move away to the sharpest of human ears. “Oh. Acting Captain now, are we?”

“Somebody’s gotta do it.” Pitch dark, chilled by hours of inactivity, the bridge felt more alien than any new planet he’d set foot on, and Trip didn’t like it. “Gimme a minute. Will that shield of yours deflect light?”

“Ten percent, maximum.” No questions. Crisp professionalism. If he’d been given a script Mal couldn’t have played his part better, and it sent a thrill of white-hot excitement down Tucker’s spine. He lunged, ducking beneath the helm station to access the main power grid from its base. A moment later there was a crackle and a small flash, then an eerie bluish glow began to pulse over every console.

Shadows vibrated in time with the throbbing of the Southerner’s cock, casting a protective blanket over one station then releasing it in favour of the next. Trip twisted awkwardly, focussing his attention on the only one that mattered. The only one that ever mattered.

_That’s my boy!_

Outwardly oblivious to the change in his surroundings Malcolm manipulated his way through Starfleet’s finest defensive programming, teeth glinting in the wicked smile usually associated with Captain Johnny’s yell of _“Fire!”_ “Doin’ okay over there?”

“Keep your head down,” Reed instructed. Trip nodded, then smacked himself in the face, grateful for the pit of gloom around Travis’s station that concealed the embarrassment as easily as the futile gesture. “It’s running.”

Nothing happened. “Nice job, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

The words were regulation, but their tones rang filthily in the cathedral hush. Like Captain Archer on a dull day Trip rose to his full height, squared his shoulders and began a leisurely perambulation of the territory, reliant on the dark to keep his man guessing and the sharpest non-pointed male ear in the quadrant to give Malcolm fair warning when he loomed up right behind.

By the Englishman’s sudden intake of breath, he gathered he’d been stealthier than he intended. “Y’ know I’ve always wanted you bent over this desk ‘f yours,” he growled, close enough to Reed’s ear to get his nose tickled with soft chocolatey hair. 

“And every other one you see. Sir.”

“Cheeky.”

“And right.” Still, those long, graceful fingers danced around the monitor as if it was some use, displaying a nebula cloud of jumbled data. If he wasn’t close enough to hear his man’s rapid breathing, Tucker might even have doubted he wanted this.

He closed the minimal gap and unleashed a moist moan against his boyfriend’s nape. Malcolm’s slim frame rippled in reaction, his butt grazing the taller man’s groin. “I like t’ see an officer lookin’ busy,” Tucker growled. “At this time ‘f night you deserve a commendation, Lieutenant.”

Reed dipped his head. Shifted his feet further apart and got a satisfactory bump from something solid right behind. “Thank you, sir.”

Big, competent hands curled over his shoulders, rolling the muscles. And if he was searching for tension, the Brit considered, the bloody fool had definitely come on the wrong shift. 

He couldn’t remember feeling this relaxed on the bridge in his life, and the fizzy sense of anticipation bubbling through his system... well, the closest he could recall was launch day. Malcolm had felt tingles everywhere – including some highly inappropriate places – when Enterprise’s engines had begun to purr, and the docking clamps juddered through their final release.

 _Release_. Oh, how he wanted it!

“Keep your eyes on your job, Mister Reed.”

Smoked honey. It sounded revolting yet, twirled through a Southern drawl, it melted his every bone. “Aye, sir.”

Trip’s laughter oozed down the back of his neck, his teeth tugging Malcolm’s collar even as his hands slipped forward, gliding until fingertips could close around a jumpsuit toggle. “Ah git the feelin’ you’re improperly dressed on duty, Lieutenant,” he slurred, unconsciously rocking in a desperate search for pressure against his stiffening shaft. 

“Ooohhh, d’ you get x-ray vision with your third pip?”

“No, I jus’ know you too well.” The smallest pelvic thrust did the job and Trip’s treacly moan rolled back off the viewscreen, drowning Malcolm’s squeak at the first brush of calluses over a bared nipple. “Knew it – no tank.”

“Never – oh! - wear them.”

Tucker jerked, angling his thrust right into his lover’s cleft. “Don’t git smart with a superior, Lieu – oh shit, Malcolm!”

“Sauce for the goose, love.” Grinding back against the inferno in his lover’s pants Malcolm edged his feet further apart, biting his lip against the erotic chafe of fabric around his nether regions. His jumpsuit was roughly dragged down, and he wrenched the few fastened buttons of his black undershirt apart before bending forward, helpless not to moan at the electric connection between bare flesh and cold screen. A gloriously familiar expostulation rose over the satisfying _sscccratch_ of a zipper close behind.

“Sonofabitch!”

Reed gripped the console handrails so hard his knuckles cracked, vaguely aware behind dropped eyelids of a sudden, unexpected flare of light. _Trip's torch_ , he decided sluggishly, surprised his cognitive functions were still online. Shining his torch right over Malcolm’s exposed arse.

“Thought you could find it blindfold!”

“Oh, I can find it, lover.” The impertinence was punished with a smart buttock-slap that shot pleasure forward through the length of his swollen cock before palms slick with oil – crafty bastard must’ve had it in his pocket – massaged the sting away. Malcolm sighed, lazily pushing himself back into those lovely lingering hands. “Just wanna see it. You’re so damn hot it hurts!”

 _Hurts. Oh, yes._. With Trip’s greasy fingers working his arsehole, Trip’s wet, sloppy mouth devouring his neck and every single shard of sensation they triggered firing straight into his wedding tackle, Malcolm knew exactly how good that pain could be.

“Please!”

The word rocketed up the vocal scale when a probing index finger hit his most tender spot. Over the pounding in his head Malcolm barely heard his partner’s gruff reply.

“Soon, babe. Soon.”

The endearment, usually so hateful, aroused him no less than the tongue that lapped his earlobe as Trip positioned himself. The American’s flashlight dropped with a clatter, its harsh white glare dancing across the bridge and throwing their joined forms into stark relief, then alternate darkness, with every roll. His cheeks were parted; the broad, blunt digits withdrawn; and something infinitely more satisfying eased into their place. Instinct took over.

Malcolm thrust back.

Trip bucked forward.

His ring flexed; popped.

And twin groans reverberated through the dark.

“’kay?” Trip grunted, every small tremor of the effort it took to hold still ripping into the man pinned to his post. Malcolm gripped the handles harder, scorched by intrusion’s fire before his sphincter softened, the splitting sensation giving way to a sweet bloom of fullness that took his breath away. Of their own volition his hips rolled, his body offering silent reassurance to its mate. 

“’s good,” he exhaled, his head too heavy to support itself while all his strength flowed south to the appendage dusting his station’s underside. “Please…”

“Easy, I gotcha.” Heavenly understanding, Trip eased a hand off his hip and forward, cradling the hot, heavy weight that throbbed to his touch. If his position bent double over unyielding metal was uncomfortable, Malcolm didn’t know it.

Everything, everywhere, was Trip. 

The leathery hand stroking his cock; the weight against his back, flooding him with heat to overwhelm his console’s sterile chill; the pressure stretching his passage with the brush of velvet against his contracting walls. He existed in a Tucker cocoon and beyond that…

Eternity.

Eternity moved closer with every push-pull of his lover’s thickness; every convulsion of his eager inner muscles. Sweat eased his skin’s slide against metal, the first musky pearls of fluid smoothing the glide of Trip’s hand, fingers dancing, pressures ever-changing on his cock. Starlight streaked at warp through Malcolm’s head as it lolled, the burn of his stretched neck muscles a stimulating contrast to the looseness uncurling in every other part of him. Small whimpers bled out, words of plea and command that burst between puckered lips only to melt into pleasured sighs. Mindless, helpless, he ground into his lover’s crotch, desperately seeking the one thing lacking to propel him into climax.

Trip knew what he wanted. He knew the way that perfect body angled itself when Malcolm needed one last electrifying connection of cockhead and prostate gland and he ground his teeth hard against the urge to just… let him have it. He’d waited too long for this: to hear their raggedy breathing roll around the bridge; to feel Malcolm’s ass envelop him right there where he’d drooled in the ancient past, back when everybody thought the Chief Engineer was just hovering near the turbolift. He had to savour this!

Engulfed in the flexible sheath of his boyfriend’s channel, every individual muscle spasm part of a symphony on his dick, it wasn’t going to happen. He sank his teeth into the Brit’s shoulder, gave the throbbing organ in his grip a last hard squeeze and thrust deep enough to find that special spot, snatching at the shriek that said he’d found it when Malcolm jolted wildly beneath him, wailing his relief at the simultaneous discharge of pressure in both balls and backbone. 

His cock slipped in Trip’s hand, its heat spraying back off the console’s base, and all around the burlier man metal bulkheads melted, casting the lovers off into deepest space. Malcolm clenched rhythmically around him, his ecstatic howl singing around the deserted vessel as he whirled through the vortex, dragging Trip in his wake. Stars exploded inside his skull. Dimly aware of the sweaty shuddering above him, Reed rode out his convulsions to the very end, rocking and rolling with them until he could feel no more, and reality slipped ever-so-peacefully away.

It returned in the form of a low, gravelled voice that could recharge his personal weapons array in a nanosecond. “Malcolm?”

He stirred; shifted. Whimpered against the sizzling sensation of Trip’s softened phallus sliding against his tender hole. “Time t’ go home,” the blond slurred, staggering as he straightened. For the first time Malcolm began to notice the knifing pressure of a metal ridge in his belly, a counter to the burn along his overstretched spine. 

“Fuck!”

“Just did babe, but if you wanna go again…”

“Smartarse.” Easing his way to vertical, the fastidious brunet gave his station a swift rub with a sleeve before clambering awkwardly back into his clothes. Head on one side, he sniffed extravagantly before disappearing beneath the desktop. Trip groaned.

“I’m on it!”

Within a minute the bridge fittings had dissolved into indeterminate black, and a minor adjustment to the ventilation system ensured the ship would smell spotless before the morning maintenance team arrived. Trip straightened his back and squinted to the area he knew must contain the aft station. “Ready for bed, Mister Reed?”

From nowhere came the most enticing voice in the universe. “Always, Mister Tucker. Shall we…”

As he spun in the general direction of the lift, Reed was stopped by a sudden, vehement yelp.

“Malcolm? How’m I gonna find that goddamn torch?”


End file.
